EIFFEL had an elevated participation at this year’s EGU 2024 which was held at Vienna, Austria and online, from 14 until 19 of April 2024, bringing together geoscientists from all over the world, covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences.
Specifically, EIFFEL organized two (2) Splinter Sessions, on Monday 15th of April, filled with results, earth intelligence and innovative solutions on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Approximately 50 participants had the opportunity to attend the Splinter Sessions physically and online, exchanging Knowledge and interacting productively, including representatives from EC, CNR, DG-RTD, CNR-IIA, JRC-KCEO, GEOSS Platform Plus (GPP), EuroGEO, and GEO Secretariat.
Our partners Angelique Lansu from OUNL & Claudia Bertini from IHE Delft moderated the Splinter Session I entitled “Nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation” which focused on showcasing the innovative approaches and findings of the EIFFEL project in utilizing nature-based solutions (NbS) to address climate change challenges. This session aimed to highlight the project's efforts in leveraging Earth Observation (EO) technologies, advanced analytics, and data integration tools to understand, monitor, and enhance the efficacy of nature-based interventions.
Participants explored how the Pilot Applications & EIFFEL Horizontal Tools Suite support the design, implementation, and evaluation of NbS by providing key insights into ecosystem services, biodiversity and the socio-economic benefits of such solutions. The session featured presentations on successful case studies, methodologies for assessing NbS impacts, and discussions on integrating these solutions into climate adaptation strategies.
This splinter meeting served as an excellent opportunity for researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and stakeholders to engage in knowledge exchange, discuss challenges and opportunities, and foster collaborations for advancing the use of NbS in climate change adaptation. Through this session, the EIFFEL project contributed to the broader discourse on sustainable, resilient, and inclusive approaches to climate adaptation, in line with global sustainability goals and the European Green Deal.
Additionally, our partners Yannis Kopsinis from LIBRA, Orestis Speyer from NOA & Dimitris Bliziotis from ICCS moderated the Splinter Session II entitled “Supporting the Earth Intelligence paradigm of GEO: The EIFFEL experience”. The first part of the session was comprised of brief presentations on the EIFFEL pilots which utilized GEO infrastructure, such as GEOSS Platform (GEO DAB+ GEO Portal), GEOSS datasets and socio-economic data in unison with local authorities to build diverse climate change applications. These applications culminated in GEO Knowledge Hub entries, available to a much wider pool of potential users, with the aim to identify how this process, i.e. an H2020 project contributing to the GKH, can be mainstreamed.
The second part revolved around the different aspects of AI touched upon during EIFFEL. The developments of the GEOSS Platform Plus (GPP) and EIFFEL project based on this work was presented. The training corpus was further utilized by the Knowledge Centre on Earth Observation (KCEO) to enhance semantic search in a variety of databases (including CORDIS and Copernicus). Further AI aspects were discussed that include data processing but also explainable AI (XAI), the cornerstone in creating trustworthy information, with the purpose of mapping these AI elements against the GEO Strategy’s Earth Intelligence paradigm and respond to the growing needs coming from the GEO community.
Participants, including members from GPP, GEO, EuroGEO and the KCEO had a fruitful discussion on how the above know-how can accommodate the rapidly evolving AI landscape to the benefit of GEO and Earth Intelligence.
In addition, our Partner Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and our colleague Meseret Menberu presented to the EGU 2024 audience the EIFFEL project though an oral presentation during the EIFFEL Splinter Session I “Nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation” and a poster presentation during the Session entitled “Advancing process representation for hydrological modelling across spatio-temporal scales”.
In particular, Meseret Menberu in the oral presentation showcased the potential benefits of the drought indices which are been produced in EIFFEL’s pilot regarding Nature-based solutions for tackling Climate Change.
In SYKE’s poster presentation at the EGU, the process-based hydrological model was introduced attracting the participants’ interest from academia, companies, innovative SMEs, research centres, training institutions, associations etc. In both SYKE’s oral and poster presentations, EIFFEL received excellent feedback and suggestions for future improvement and research.
EIFFEL presence was also reinforced by our Partner IHE Delft and our colleague M. Haris Ali who successfully completed 2 oral presentations.
The first Oral Presentation on 17th of April entitled “Web application for supporting assessment of climate change adaptation strategies in Aa of Weerijs catchment, the Netherlands” attracted the interest of 50 experts in the domain of geosciences in person and online. The presentation focused on the web application designed to support participatory planning and results dissemination for Pilot 1. The application enables stakeholders to visualize the potential impact of Climate Change (CC) on drought conditions in the near future (2050) and assess the potential of nature-based adaptive strategies to cope with such CC threat. Assessment makes use of drought-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), developed in consultation with the main stakeholders in the area. The underlying principle is that the adaptive strategies are co-created in a transparent, multi-stakeholder, and participatory context, streamlining their implementation in landscape planning.
The second Oral Presentation was successfully completed by M. Haris Ali on 18th of April entitled “Signatures-based appraisal of global rainfall datasets to capture hydrological trends in a meso- scale catchment”. More than 45 attendees in person and online had the opportunity to explore 35 different evaluation metrics for testing the potential of global rainfall data to stimulate hydrological processes in the Aa of Weerijs catchment. By testing different combinations of metrics, the research question: “How does the variation in evaluation criteria/metrics influence perceptions regarding the performance quality of rainfall datasets?” was addressed.
EGU 2024 EIFFEL Abstracts
Jonoski, A., Ali, M. H., Bertini, C., Popescu, I., and van Andel, S. J.: Web application for supporting assessment of climate change adaptation strategies in Aa of Weerijs catchment, the Netherlands, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-2599, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-2599, 2024.
Ali, M. H., Hrachowitz, M., Popescu, I., and Jonoski, A.: Signatures-based appraisal of global rainfall datasets to capture hydrological trends in a meso-scale catchment, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-8064, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8064, 2024.
Menberu, M., Jakkila, J., Veijalainen, N., Böttcher, K., Fronzek, S., Kolhinen, V., Havu, P., Fazel, N., Kumpumäki, M., Koistinen, A., and Huttunen, M.: Introducing WSFS-P, Process-based Version of the Watershed Simulation and Forecasting System (WSFS) in Finland, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-15445, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15445
During the EGU 2024 Conference EIFFEL's final brochure was distributed among the participants.
